Becoming A New Family
by SuthrnSftblGrl
Summary: I can't really think of a summary for this. It's Arthur's POV about things.


Disclaimer- I don't own them, I'm just using them. They belong to other people.

A/N: This is Arthur's POV about the whole family changing. It's not about Spencer and Ashley primarily, but they are still in here. I all of a sudden really wanted to write this, and this is what I came up with. So anyways, here it is if you wanna read it.

I can't say things have been great around here since Paula left. It was hard, especially during the beginning. It was like, one day you have everything you thought you wanted, only to find out the next day that your perfect life wasn't so perfect. Some days were so much harder than others, but the good days made it a little less painful. I had never been a single parent before, obviously, and things changed so fast I didn't know if I was going to be able to keep up. But I adjusted. And it definitely took the kids a while to get settled into the new family thing. Especially considering the condition we were all in when it first happened.

Glen took the longest to come to terms with the fact that just because he was a star didn't mean he would get a happy ending. He brought some of that on himself that night in the park. Granted he isn't the smartest kid around, but you would think some kind of athletic instinct would kick in when he was deciding whether or not to play that game of basketball. He had to have known it wasn't a smart idea to do that. He had everything going for him, at least to the public eye. He was the star of the basketball team, he had a girlfriend who was just like him, and a full ride to Duke University; the prized private school of North Carolina. Basketball players in that one state alone work all their lives to get into that school and aren't even given a second look. He was noticed all the way on the other side of the country. Did that not count for anything?

Of course Glen's argument would be 'never settle until you have everything you want'. And as is natural to all human beings, there is always a want for something. So when he basically watched his family falling apart in front of him he felt powerless to do anything. What kind of star can help a team full of guys he doesn't even know that well, but fails at helping his own family? Paula was cheating on me, his brother all of a sudden wanted to know his real mom, and his sister was gay. I could almost see the anger building up inside of him daily, and it all exploded in that one game of basketball.

Too bad he is as careless as he is thoughtful. He told me that while he was in that ambulance on the way to the hospital he saw his whole future slip away from him. Now what kind of hope did he think he was giving me when he said that? I had just lost a woman I thought loved me to a man she followed half way across the country. When Glen told me that, it kind of felt like Paula had taken my future with her when she had left. Damn Glen for his pessimistic nature.

Clay was in denial for the longest time. As I personally may not have seen a real reason for him to contact his birth mother, he did, so I let him. Not like I could really tell him no anyhow. I mean, yea he is my son, but when you want to do something as badly as he wanted to do that, you find a way. And as smart as he is, he probably already had a plan for if I had said no. Hell, what could it hurt? Maybe that was his salvation from this whole thing. My thought on the whole ordeal, as a social worker, not as a farther, was that there was a ninety percent chance the meeting was going to blow up in his face. It wasn't so much that I learned, but that Clay taught me, that for him to completely accept something he had to experience it himself. And to tell you the truth, I think he is the only one of us who wasn't completely thrown off balance by the move.

How could he have been? He had been seen different by people in the world his whole life. Growing up the colored kid in the all white family, who wouldn't feel different? He may not have shown it everyday. Ok, so he rarely showed it, but that doesn't mean people didn't see it. So when we moved to LA, to him, it was just another group of people who would see him as different. He was completely prepared for anything that would be thrown at him. And when he didn't get automatically labeled, he was confused. So much confused, that it was the last straw. He had questions, and only one person had the answers.

Biggest mistake of his life. That's what he told me meeting his birth mother was the next morning when he got home. And as big of a mistake as it may have been to him, he assured me that it only made him see how truly lucky he was. How every single thing that had taken place in his life up until then had led him to where he was. In a family that loved him no matter what. And that even though we were having problems, we were still a family and could still love. That gave me hope, but my motivation to actually do something about it was still missing.

Spencer changed the most out of all of us. And to her surprise so far, has gotten the most out of our move here. Sure Glen got his scholarship but he could have gotten that back in Ohio. Plus, what good is it to him right now? And yea, Clay found his birth mother. Again, he could have done that back in Ohio, and that has done him more harm than good anyways. But Spencer, she found the one thing that was worth the move. She found Ashley. From the way she described their first encounter to me, however awkward it may have been, it was the start of a whole new part of her life. One that I'm not so sure she would have found back in Ohio. I see it in her every day. She's starting to care less and less about what other people think, and she's starting to care more about how to make Ashley happy. She was slow at doing it. With Paula out of the way, there was nothing stopping her from actually seeing Ashley so she could no longer hide behind that excuse. Then when things took off between them, she got more comfortable talking to me about it, because she knew I was happy for her.

And now? Well, now she doesn't let fear stop her. When she knows she wants something in her life, she goes for it. And I'm guessing that's in huge part to Ashley. She told me one day, shortly after Paula moved out, that she felt like it was all her fault. That somehow her new outlook on life caused everyone in the family to turn against one another. I explained to her that, while that may have been a very small part of what caused everything to finally blow up, it definitely wasn't her fault.

I'm not sure she believes me, but she will eventually. The old Spencer would have just taken what I said for what it was worth, and still kept her own guilt. I think it was because she always had to have a solution to a problem, or a cause for an effect. But lately it's been the exact opposite really. She takes things for what they are and doesn't always question them. When she gets frustrated because she doesn't know how to help me through this situation it kills me. It kills me because I can't tell her that she is helping me. That she has helped me so much more than she thinks she ever could. Just seeing her live her life, I mean really live it to the fullest, helps me make it through each and every day. Because to have gone through what she did, yet still come out having gotten what she wanted, means the world to me.

And I can't tell her right now because it would ruin the whole dynamic we are trying to get back. Showing favoritism right now is definitely not something I would even think about doing. It's my responsibility to get this family back together, and damnit I'm going to do it if it kills me. Which, in the beginning, I thought it would the way those three fought me tooth and nail. It was hard for them, so I let it slide. But now it's different. We are finally becoming the family I thought we once were. We're going to be ok.


End file.
